As the wind of "globalisation" keeps
blowing across the world, Md. Anisur Rahman, who was a Member of the first
Planning Commission in post-independent Bangladesh, has sounded a note of
caution about an open-ended free market which, he believes, may not protect the
interests of the poor nations.

Giving a lecture on "Globalisation and the
Emerging Ideological Struggle", Md. Anisur Rahman, a veteran economist
known for his left-leaning and egalitarian views, was critical of the ideology
of globalisation through which, he warned, unbridled capitalism is trying to
consolidate its triumph and expand its influence over the world in today's
post-Cold War era.

While the last decade of the last century of this
millennium is characterised by a general collapse of initiatives for social
transformation, and also total disillusionment with the development assistance
of the developed nations for the so-called 'developing' nations, capitalism has
emerged as the "victorious ideology of the day," he said.

Anisur Rahman went on to explain how capitalism
today has been seeking to consolidate its victory with a call for globalisation
-- for the freeing of markets for unchecked exploitation by private capital
across the whole earth "with total disregard for national and global
welfare." But resistance to this latest capitalist move came for the first
time through large-scale protests during the WTO and the World Bank/IMF
conferences at Seattle and Washington.

Rahman's lecture was part of a 'millennium public
lecture series 2000' organised by the Bangladesh Institute of Development
Studies (BIDS) at its premises on July 6. Presided over by M. Asaduzzaman,
Director General of BIDS, a national think-tank on economic and development
issues, it was attended by a select group of the country's leading economists
and development practitioners, including State Minister for Planning Mohiuddin
Khan Alamgir.

In his lecture, Rahman looked retrospectively at
the experiments and efforts at social change in this century and at the latest
capitalist move of globalisation as well, and tried to trace elements of the new
protest movement challenging globalisation, posing some central questions that
the development discourse needs to address today.

He pointed out that Marxism, calling for radical
action for the liberation of the oppressed and exploited and for promotion of
the communal spirit in social life, has inspired social and political action
across the world. This has resulted in great convulsions in a number of
societies and a world-threatening arms race between the powers for and against
such changes.

Rahman went on to explain that changes inspired
by the Marxist ideology "have nowhere yielded a social order that does
justice to the vision; and the edifices built upon major social upheavals for
such change have finally collapsed." This, he said, has put the radical
camp in disarray, and left mankind without an alternative ideological mooring to
challenge capitalism.

On the 'liberal' side, Rahman said, the last
half-a-century saw the rise and fall of a faith in 'development' that also
mobilised thinking and action on a world scale. The call of 'development'
promised prosperity to the 'developing' nations without radical social
upheavals. During this period, development discourses swept the social sciences
and national and international establishments; foreign "development
assistance" flowed to the developing countries to hasten the promised
prosperity; and state powers swelled to deliver the product.

But on the whole, Rahman believes, no significant
dent on the material condition of the poverty-stricken people has resulted while
economic and social inequalities have skyrocketed. He sardonically pointed out
that social corruption and crimes have grown alarmingly, and the money for
development has been looted by the elite for their personal enrichment. The
developed countries are not unhappy at this development, because they know that
this stolen money will create a greedy and Westernised oligarchy which will be
easier to manipulate than the general people.

Rahman believes that today there is little left
of the faith in "development", although national and international
establishments and the mainstream economists continue to use the term, saying
"now that state efforts have failed, the 'free market' is the best way for
nations to develop".

Taking a diametrically opposed view of the
conventional as well as the currently practised development economics, Rahman
pointed out that concern for distribution equity has been virtually abandoned
"in reverence for the competitive pursuit of private greed acclaimed as the
main stimulation for growth."

"In its place," he said, "we find
a loud concern for poverty alleviation". And then again, Rahman pointed
out, the measure of poverty is based on a set of presumed "basic
needs" of life -- an absolute measure that ignores human aspirations and
the misery derived from one's relative material status in society.

Said Rahman : "Such a concern for poverty
alleviation in a minimalist and static sense amounts, in effect, to a concern
for barely maintaining the productivity of labour of the ordinary people, as if
they are nothing but 'livestock' to be fed and sheltered to yield returns for
the privileged society (i.e. for their surplus to be appropriated -- essentially
confirming Marx's theory of exploitation)."

He further elaborated: "This 'livestock'
notion of poverty provides only for maintenance of 'human capital', and the real
question of distribution, or right to a share, of social income comes in fact
after this provision!"

Rahman believes that universalisation of this
notion of poverty and concern for poverty alleviation only in this maintenance
sense signifies, indeed, the final ideological triumph of capitalism on a global
scale.

One may see the hollowness of such concern for
'poverty alleviation' in a global strategy of development that entails the flow
of international capital to exploit cheap labour in developing countries --
promising on the one hand greater employment to their people to alleviate their
poverty, and on the other hand, high returns to capital, but actually ensuring
the permanence of poverty so that the Western capitalists continue to have a
pool of cheap labour to draw from.

"This, a process which is well on its way,
is the essence of rationalisation of 'globalisation' for world development for
which client states are being purchased with so-called 'development assistance',
confined now more to building of infrastructures to facilitate private
entrepreneurship (sic), with the condition that they open up their capital and
labour markets to international capital to exploit their cheap labour,"
says Rahman, a former economics professor who once had a stint at the
International Labour Organisation (ILO).

He believes that the notion of poverty, by
genesis as well as in the perception of the people concerned, is a relative
notion. "As a corollary, poverty can never be alleviated within the
framework of gross inequalities in wealth and consumption, and what we,
therefore, need is alleviation of inequalities rather than alleviation of
poverty as such."